Don’t Be Afraid

Today’s Saturday Short is “Don’t Be Afraid” from the Shape Up and Fly Right collection. It’s about the darkness lurking under the facade of the perfect families in educational shorts.

The star of our short is Billy, who is building a complicated contraption in his bedroom. Mom comes in and asks him why he isn’t in bed yet. He’s not a bit sleepy, he tells Mom. Tough, she says, time for you to go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow, remember? Now good night, she says, turning off the lights and shutting the door.

Billy doesn’t go to sleep after Mom leaves. Instead he stares at the shadows moving along the wall as the narrator plays creepy music and tells Billy that fear is natural and not shameful. It won’t help you when the closet monster jumps out to eat your face anyway.

Suddenly Billy sits straight up. He leaps out of bed to turn on the lights, calling for his mother. She comes in. What’s wrong? Can I sleep with the lights on tonight, he asks. Oh, Mom says, so that’s what’s going on.

Mom walks Billy back to bed. Are you often afraid like this? she asks. You should have told me. Being afraid of the dark is nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone is afraid sometimes. Remember last Sunday when Mom was making breakfast? She spilled some bacon grease on the stove and it caught fire. Everyone was terrified until Dad smothered the fire with a pot lid. Their fear was a way of alerting them of the danger.

Speaking of danger, remember the time you were playing ball with your friends at school and accidentally threw the ball on the roof? Remember how Danny was mad at you? Remember how he told you to climb up the drain pipe to get it down? You were afraid then, weren’t you Billy? You knew that if you climbed the drain pipe you would fall. That fear was your way of warning you not to do something stupid. So you did the smart thing and got the janitor to bring his ladder to get the ball down. Sometimes it’s good sense to pay attention to your fear.

But not always. Sometimes we’re afraid of things that can’t hurt us. Like Kathy Lewis who was afraid of dogs. Billy found out about that when he was playing with Scrappy the Collie. Kathy wouldn’t come near him when she saw the dog. In fact, she ran across the street. What a fraidy cat, Billy says. Scrappy wouldn’t have hurt her.

That wasn’t a nice thing to say about Kathy, Mom doesn’t say. Instead she goes into being afraid of what people might think and how that is wrong. Remember when Mrs. Campbell called her a few months ago looking for Frank? He hadn’t come home from school and his parents were worried. Eventually they found Frank in the basement, hiding next to their single barrel in the middle of the room. He was afraid to show his parents his report card because he got bad grades. If he got bad grades, his parents wouldn’t love him anymore he thought. Where in the heck did Frank get that idea? What’s been going on at the Campbell place? And why is there a single barrel in their basement? What’s it for? Do we need to be concerned?

So you see, Mom says, people can be afraid of all sorts of foolish things. Like being afraid of the dark, Billy says. But what can you do about it? First, Mom replies, figure out if there’s something real to be afraid of, like the grease fire. Then learn how to protect yourself, like when Dad threw the pot lid on the fire. If it’s nothing concrete that’s frightening you, decide if it’s a warning that something is incredibly stupid and you shouldn’t do it, like climbing the drain pipe.

But how can you tell if it’s a real danger, Billy asks. Use your common sense, says Mom. Find out if others are afraid of the same thing you are. Like Kathy who could see that Scrappy wasn’t dangerous by the way Billy was playing with him. That’s true, says Billy, and Kathy isn’t afraid of dogs anymore. Her dad got her a Cocker spaniel puppy, a breed known for serious biting. Kathy trained her dog to destroy her enemies and now she’s not afraid anymore.

You can also get over your fear by talking it over with someone, like Mom and Billy are right now. Frank should have done that, Mom said. His fear of his parents was one reason why he got bad grades in the first place. Seriously, what’s going on at the Campbells? I’m starting to wonder if we need to get CPS involved over there.

So how about your fear of the dark? Well, Billy says, it’s not so much the dark as much as the fact that he’s afraid that Mom and Dad might slip away in the middle of the night and never come back. Oh, don’t worry about that, Mom says. If they’re going to one of their all-night keggers they’ll call a babysitter for Billy. And they won’t leave without telling him, either.

Now let’s try this going-to-bed thing again. Should I leave the light on, Mom asks? No, just leave the door cracked open, Billy says. Okay, Mom says. Good night, she says as she turns out the light and halfway closes the door.

The narrator returns to drone Billy to sleep by recapping the lessons of the short for the second time. Billy feigns sleep to get the narrator to leave his room. And what do you know, it works! Good job, Billy!